"compleat gentleman" of the English Renaissance, Sir Philip Sidney, with his statements
about the moral effects of poetry, was psychologizing literature, as were such romantic
poets as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley with their theories of the imagination. In
this sense, then, virtually every literary critic has been concerned at some time with the
psychology of writing or responding to literature.
During the twentieth century, however, psychological criticism has come to be
associated with a particular school of thought: the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund
Freud (1856-1939) and his followers. (The currently most significant of these followers,
Jacques Lacan, will be discussed in chapter 6.) From this association have derived most
of the abuses and misunderstandings of the modern psychological approach to literature.
Abuses of the approach have resulted from an excess of enthusiasm, which has been
manifested in several ways. First, the practitioners of the Freudian approach often push
their critical theses too hard, forcing literature into a Procrustean bed of psychoanalytic
theory at the expense of other relevant considerations (for example, the work's total
thematic and aesthetic context). Second, the literary criticism of the psychoanalytic
extremists has at times degenerated into a special occultism with its own mystique and
jargon exclusively for the in-group. Third, many critics of the psychological school have
been either literary scholars who have understood the principles of psychology
imperfectly or professional psychologists who have had little feeling for literature as art:
the former have abused Freudian insights through oversimplification and distortion; the
latter have bruised our literary sensibilities.
These abuses have given rise to a widespread mistrust of the psychological
approach as a tool for critical analysis. Conservative scholars and teachers of literature,
often shocked by such terms as anal eroticism, phallic symbol, and Oedipal complex,
and confused by the clinical diagnoses of literary problems (for example, the
interpretation of Hamlet's character as a "severe case of hysteria on a cyclothymic
basis"that is, a manic-depressive psychosis), have rejected all psychological criticism,
other than the commonsense type, as pretentious nonsense. By explaining a few of the
principles of Freudian psychology that have been applied to literary interpretation and
by providing some cautionary remarks, we hope to introduce the reader to a balanced
critical perspective that will enable him or her to appreciate the instructive possibilities
of the psychological approach while avoiding the pitfalls of either extremist attitude.
B. Freud's Theories
The foundation of Freud's contribution to modern psychology is his emphasis on
the unconscious aspects of the human psyche. A brilliant creative genius, Freud
provided convincing evidence, through his many carefully recorded case studies, that
most of our actions are motivated by psychological forces over which we have very
limited control. He demonstrated that, like the iceberg, the human mind is structured so
that its great weight and density lie beneath the surface (below the level of
consciousness). In "The Anatomy of the Mental Personality," Freud discriminates
between the levels of conscious and unconscious mental activity:
The oldest and best meaning of the word "unconscious" is the descriptive one;
we call "unconscious" any mental process the existence of which we are obligated to
assumebecause, for instance, we infer it in some way from its effectsbut of which
we are not directly aware. ... If we want to be more accurate, we should modify the
statement by saying that we call a process "unconscious" when we have to assume that
it was active at a certain time, although at that time we knew nothing about it. (99-100)
Freud further emphasizes the importance of the unconscious by pointing out that
even the "most conscious processes are conscious for only a short period; quite soon
they become latent, though they can easily become conscious again" (100). In view of
this, Freud defines two kinds of unconscious:
one which is transformed into conscious material easily and under conditions
which frequently arise, and another in the case of which such a transformation is
difficult, can only come about with a considerable expenditure of energy, or may never
occur at all. . . . We call the unconscious which is only latent, and so can easily become
conscious, the "preconscious," and keep the name "unconscious" for the other. (101)
That most of the individual's mental processes are unconscious is thus Freud's
first major premise. The second (which has been rejected by a great many professional
psychologists, including some of Freud's own disciplesfor example, Carl Gustav Jung
and Alfred Adler) is that ll human behavior is motivated ultimately by what we would
call sexuality. Freud designates the prime psychic force as libido, or sexual energy. His
third major premise is that because of the powerful social taboos attached to certain
sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed (that is, actively
excluded from conscious awareness).
Starting from these three premises, we may examine several corollaries of
Freudian theory. Principal among these is Freud's assignment of the mental processes to
three psychic zones: the id, the ego, and the superego. An explanation of these zones
may be illustrated with Freud's own diagram:
perceptual-conscious
The diagram reveals immediately the vast portion of the mental apparatus that is
not conscious. Furthermore, it helps to clarify the relationship between ego, id, and
superego, as well as their collective relationship to the conscious and the unconscious.
We should note that the id is entirely unconscious and that only a small portion of the
ego and the superego is conscious. With this diagram as a guide, we may define the
nature and functions of the three psychic zones.
1. The id is the reservoir of libido, the primary source of all psychic energy. It
functions to fulfill the primordial life principle, which Freud considers to be the
pleasure principle. Without consciousness or semblance of rational order, the id is
characterized by a tremendous and amorphous vitality. Speaking metaphorically, Freud
explains this "obscure inaccessible part of our personality" as "a chaos, a cauldron of
seething excitement [with] no organization and no unified will, only an impulsion to
obtain satisfaction for the instinctual needs, in accordance with the pleasure principle"
(103-^1). He further stresses that the "laws of logicabove all, the law of contradiction
do not hold for processes of the id. Contradictory impulses exist side by side without
neutralizing each other or drawing apart. . . . Naturally, the id knows no values, no good
and evil, no morality" (104-5).
The id is, in short, the source of all our aggressions and desires. It is lawless,
asocial, and amoral. Its function is to gratify our instincts for pleasure without regard for
social conventions, legal ethics, or moral restraint. Unchecked, it would lead us to any
lengthsto destruction and even self-destruction to satisfy its impulses for pleasure.
Safety for the self and for others does not lie within the province of the id; its concern is
purely for instinctual gratification, heedless of consequence. For centuries before Freud,
this force was recognized in human nature but often attributed to supernatural and
external rather than natural and internal forces: the id as defined by Freud is identical in
many respects to the Devil as defined by theologians. Thus there is a certain
psychological validity in the old saying that a rambunctious child (whose id has not yet
been brought under control by ego and superego) is "full of the devil." We may also see
in young children (and neurotic adults) certain uncontrolled impulses toward pleasure
that often lead to excessive self-indulgence and even to self-injury
2. In view of the id's dangerous potentialities, it is necessary that other psychic
agencies protect the individual and society. The first of these regulating agencies, that
which protects the individual, is the ego. This is the rational governing agent of the
psyche. Though the ego lacks the strong vitality of the id, it regulates the instinctual
drives of the id so that they may be released in nondestructive behavioral patterns. And
though a large portion of the ego is unconscious, the ego nevertheless comprises what
we ordinarily think of as the conscious mind. As Freud points out, "In popular language,
we may say that the ego stands for reason and circumspection, while the id stands for
the untamed passions." Whereas the id is governed solely by the pleasure principle, the
ego is governed by the reality principle. Consequently, the ego serves as intermediary
between the world within and the world without.
3. The other regulating agent, that which primarily functions to protect society,
is the superego. Largely unconscious, the superego is the moral censoring agency, the
repository of conscience and pride. It is, as Freud says in "The Anatomy of the Mental
Personality" the "representative of all moral restrictions, the advocate of the impulse
toward perfection, in short it is as much as we have been able to apprehend psychologically of what people call the 'higher' things in human life" (95). Acting either
directly or through the ego, the superego serves to repress or inhibit the drives of the id,
to block off and thrust back into the unconscious those impulses toward pleasure that
society regards as unacceptable, such as overt aggression, sexual passions, and the
Oedipal instinct. Freud attributes the development of the superego to the parental
influence that manifests itself in terms of punishment for what society considers to be
bad behavior and reward for what society considers good behavior. An overactive
superego creates an unconscious sense of guilt (hence the familiar term guilt complex
and the popular misconception that Freud advocated the relaxing of all moral inhibitions
and social restraints). Whereas the id is dominated by the pleasure principle and the ego
by the reality principle, the superego is dominated by the morality principle. We might
say that the id would make us devils, that the superego would have us behave as angels
(or, worse, as creatures of absolute social conformity), and that it remains for the ego to
keep us healthy human beings by maintaining a balance between these two opposing
forces. It was this balance that Freud advocatednot a complete removal of inhibiting
factors.
One of the most instructive applications of this Freudian tri-partition to literary
criticism is the well-known essay "In Nomine Diaboli" by Henry A. Murray (435-52), a
knowledgeable psychoanalyst and a sensitive literary critic as well. In analyzing
Herman Melville's masterpiece Moby-Dick with the tools provided by Freud, Murray
explains the White Whale as a symbolic embodiment of the strict conscience of New
England Puritanism (that is, as a projection of Melville's own superego). Captain Ahab,
the monomaniac who leads the crew of the Pequod to destruction through his insane
compulsion to pursue and strike back at the creature who has injured him, is interpreted
as the symbol of a rapacious and uncontrollable id. Starbuck, the sane Christian and first
mate who struggles to mediate between the forces embodied in Moby-Dick and Ahab,
symbolizes a balanced and sensible rationalism (that is, the ego).
Though many scholars are reluctant to accept Freud's tripartition of the human
psyche, they have not reacted against this aspect of psychoanalytic criticism so strongly
as against the application of his sexual theories to the symbolic interpretation of
literature. Let us briefly examine the highlights of such theories. Perhaps the most
controversial (and, to many persons, the most offensive) facet of psychoanalytic
criticism is its tendency to interpret imagery in terms of sexuality. Following Freud's
example in his interpretation of dreams, the psychoanalytic critic tends to see all
concave images (ponds, flowers, cups or vases, caves, and hollows) as female or yonic
symbols, and all images whose length exceeds their diameter (towers, mountain peaks,
snakes, knives, lances, and swords) as male or phallic symbols. Perhaps even more
objectionable to some is the interpretation of such activities as dancing, riding, and flying as symbols of sexual pleasure: for example, in The Life and Works of Edgar Allan
the individual is frustrated in gratifying these needs during childhood, the adult
personality may be warped accordingly (that is, development may be arrested or
fixated). For example, adults who are compulsively fastidious may suffer, according to
the psychoanalyst, from an anal fixation traceable to overly strict toilet training during
early childhood. Likewise, compulsive cigarette smoking may be interpreted as a
symptom of oral fixation traceable to premature weaning. Even among "normal" adults,
sublimated responses occur when the individual is vicariously stimulated by images
associated with one of the major erogenous zones. In his Fiction and the Unconscious,
Simon O. Lesser suggests that the anal-erotic quality in Robinson Crusoe (manifested in
the hero's scrupulous record keeping and orderliness) accounts at least partially for the
unconscious appeal of Defoe's masterpiece (306).
According to Freud, the child reaches the stage of genital primacy around age
five, at which time the Oedipus complex manifests itself. In simple terms, the Oedipus
complex derives from the boy's unconscious rivalry with his father for the love of his
mother. Freud borrowed the term from the classic Sophoclean tragedy in which the hero
unwittingly murders his father and marries his mother. In The Ego and the Id, Freud describes the complex as follows:
. . . the boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him. For a time these two
relationships [the child's devotion to his mother and identification with his father]
proceed side by side, until the boy's sexual wishes in regard to his mother become more
intense and his father is perceived as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus
complex originates. His identification with his father then takes on a hostile colouring
and changes into a wish to get rid of his father in order to take his place with his mother.
Henceforward his relation to his father is ambivalent; it seems as if the ambivalence
inherent in the identification from the beginning had become manifest. An ambivalent
attitude to his father and an object-relation of a solely affectionate kind to his mother
make up the content of the simple positive Oedipus complex in a boy. (21-22)
Further ramifications of the Oedipus complex are a fear of castration and an
identification of the father with strict authority in all forms; subsequent hostility to
authority is therefore associated with the Oedipal ambivalence to which Freud refers.
(The Oedipus complex figures strongly in Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory [see
chapter 6].) A story like Nathaniel Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," for
instance, has been interpreted by Lesser as essentially a symbolic rebellion against the
father figure. And with this insight we may find meaning in the young hero's disturbing
outburst of laughter as he watches the cruel tarring and feathering of his once-respected
relative: the youth is expressing his unconscious joy in being released from parental
authority. Now he is free, as the friendly stranger suggests, to make his own way in the
adult world without the help (and restraint) of his kinsman.
culminates in the bitter misogyny of his outburst against Ophelia, who is devastated at
having to bear a reaction so wholly out of proportion to her own offense and has no idea
that in reviling her Hamlet is really expressing his bitter resentment against his mother"
(Jones 96). The famous "Get thee to a nunnery" speech has even more sinister overtones
than are generally recognized, explains Jones, when we understand the pathological
degree of Hamlet's conditions and read "nunnery" as Elizabethan slang for brothel.
The underlying theme relates ultimately to the splitting of the mother image
which the infantile unconscious effects into two opposite pictures: one of a virginal
Madonna, an inaccessible saint towards whom all sensual approaches are unthinkable,
and the other of a sensual creature accessible to everyone. . . . When sexual repression is
highly pronounced, as with Hamlet, then both types of women are felt to be hostile: the
pure one out of resentment at her repulses, the sensual one out of the temptation she
offers to plunge into guiltiness. Misogyny, as in the play, is the inevitable result. (97-98)
Although it has been attacked by the anti-Freudians and occasionally disparaged as
"obsolete" by the neo-Freudians, Jones's critical tour de force has nevertheless attained
the status of a modern classic. "Both as an important seminal work which led to a
considerable re-examination of Hamlet, and as an example of a thorough and intelligent
application of psychoanalysis to drama," writes Claudia C. Morrison, "Jones's essay
stands as the single most important Freudian study of literature to appear in
America . . ." (175).